Lee Child - Without Fail

“In what way?” Neagley asked.

“In every way,” Reacher said. “Every possible way we could be. What happened when we talked to them?”

“They stonewalled like crazy.”

He nodded. “That’s what I thought too. They went into some kind of a stoic silence. All of them. Almost like a trance. I interpreted that as a response to some kind of danger. Like they were really digging deep and defending against whatever hold somebody had over them. Like it was vitally important. Like they knew they couldn’t afford to say a single word. But you know what?”

“What?”

“They just didn’t have a clue what we were talking about. Not the first idea. We were two crazy white people asking them impossible questions, is all. They were too polite and too inhibited to tell us to get lost. They just sat there patiently while we rambled on.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Think about what else we know. There’s a weird sequence of facts on the tape. They look a little tired going into Stuyvesant’s office, and a little less tired coming out. They look fairly neat going in, and a little disheveled coming out. They spend fifteen minutes in there, and only nine in the secretarial area.”

“So?” Stuyvesant asked.

Reacher smiled. “Your office is probably the world’s cleanest room. You could do surgery in there. You keep it that way deliberately. We know about the thing with the briefcase and the wet shoes, by the way.”

Froelich looked blank. Stuyvesant’s turn to blush.

“It’s tidy to the point of obsession,” Reacher said. “And yet the cleaners spent fifteen minutes in there. Why?”

“They were unpacking the letter,” Stuyvesant said. “Placing it in position.”

“No, they weren’t.”

“Was it just Maria on her own? Did Julio and Anita come out first?”

“No.”

“So who put it there? My secretary?”

“No.”

The room went quiet.

“Are you saying I did?” Stuyvesant asked.

Reacher shook his head. “All I’m doing is asking why the cleaners spent fifteen minutes in an office that was already very clean.”

“They were resting?” Neagley said.

Reacher shook his head again. Froelich smiled suddenly.

“Doing something to make themselves disheveled?” she said.

Reacher smiled back. “Like what?”

“Like having sex?”

Stuyvesant went pale.

“I sincerely hope not,” he said. “And there were three of them, anyway.”

“Threesomes aren’t unheard of,” Neagley said.

“They live together,” Stuyvesant said. “They want to do that, they can do it at home, can’t they?”

“It can be an erotic adventure,” Froelich said. “You know, making out at work.”

“Forget the sex,” Reacher said. “Think about the dishevelment. What exactly created that impression for us?”

Everybody shrugged. Stuyvesant was still pale. Reacher smiled.

“Something else on the tape,” he said. “Going in, the garbage bag is reasonably empty. Coming out, it’s much fuller. So was there a lot of trash in the office?”

“No,” Stuyvesant said, like he was offended. “I never leave trash in there.”

Froelich sat forward. “So what was in the bag?”

“Trash,” Reacher said.

“I don’t understand,” Froelich said.

“Fifteen minutes is a long time, people,” Reacher said. “They worked efficiently and thoroughly in the secretarial area and had it done in nine minutes. That’s a slightly bigger and slightly more cluttered area. Things all over the place. So compare the two areas, compare the complexity, assume they work just as hard everywhere, and tell me how long they should have spent in the office.”

Froelich shrugged. “Seven minutes? Eight? About that long?”

Neagley nodded. “I’d say nine minutes, tops.”

“I like it clean,” Stuyvesant said. “I leave instructions to that effect. I’d want them in there for ten minutes, at least.”

“But not fifteen,” Reacher said. “That’s excessive. And we asked them about it. We asked them, why so long in there? And what did they say?”

“They didn’t answer,” Neagley said. “Just looked puzzled.”

“Then we asked them whether they spent the same amount of time in there every night. And they said yes, they did.”

Stuyvesant looked to Neagley for confirmation. She nodded.

“OK,” Reacher said. “We’ve boiled it down. We’re looking at fifteen particular minutes. You’ve all seen the tapes. Now tell me how they spent that time.”

Nobody spoke.

“Two possibilities,” Reacher said. “Either they didn’t, or they spent the time growing their hair.”

“What?” Froelich said.

“That’s what makes them look disheveled. Julio especially. His hair is a little longer coming out than going in.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s possible because we weren’t looking at one night’s activities. We were looking at two separate nights spliced together. Two halves of two different nights.”

Silence in the room.

“Two tapes,” Reacher said. “The tape change at midnight is the key. The first tape is kosher. Has to be, because early on it shows Stuyvesant and his secretary going home. That was the real thing. The real Wednesday. The cleaners show up at eleven fifty-two. They look tired, because maybe that’s the first night in their shift pattern. Maybe they’ve been up all day doing normal daytime things. But it’s been a routine night at work so far. They’re on time. No spilled coffee anywhere, no huge amount of trash anywhere. The garbage bag is reasonably empty. My guess is they had the office finished in about nine minutes. Which is probably their normal speed. Which is reasonably fast. Which is why they were puzzled when we claimed it was slow. My guess is in reality they came out at maybe one minute past midnight and spent another nine minutes on the secretarial station and left the area at ten past midnight.”

“But?” Froelich asked.

“But after midnight we were looking at a different night altogether. Maybe from a couple of weeks ago, before the guy got his latest haircut. A night when they arrived in the area later, and therefore left the area later. Because of some earlier snafu in some other office. Maybe some big pile of trash that filled up their bag. They looked more energetic coming out because they were hurrying to catch up. And maybe it was a night in the middle of their work week and they’d adjusted to their pattern and slept properly. So we saw them go in on Wednesday and come out on a completely different night.”

“But the date was correct,” Froelich said. “It was definitely Thursday’s date.”

Reacher nodded. “Nendick planned it ahead of time.”

“Nendick?”

“Your tape guy,” Reacher said. “My guess is for a whole week he had that particular camera’s midnight-to-six tape set up to show that particular Thursday’s date. Maybe two whole weeks. Because he needed three options. Either the cleaners would be in and out before midnight, or in before midnight and out after midnight, or in and out after midnight. He had to wait to match his options. If they’d been in and out before midnight, he’d have given you a matching tape showing nothing at all between midnight and six. If they’d been in and out after midnight, that’s what you’d have seen. But the way it happened, he had to use one that showed them leaving only.”

“Nendick left the letter?” Stuyvesant asked.

Reacher nodded. “Nendick is the insider. Not the cleaners. What that particular camera really recorded that night was the cleaners leaving just after midnight and then sometime before six in the morning Nendick himself stepping in through the fire door with gloves on and the letter in his hand. Probably around five-thirty, I would guess, so he wouldn’t have to wait long before trashing the real tape and choosing his substitute.”